Chapter VI

Veronica Zaranegra was charmed to find her necklace; she was still more charmed to find an adventure through it.

This beautiful youth with his starry eyes, soft with admiration, who had brought her back the opals, looked like a knight out of fairyland. She was young; she was weary of the seclusion of her widowhood; she was kept in close constraint by those who had authority over her; she was ready to re-enter life in its enjoyments, its amusements, its affections, its desires. The tragic end of her husband had impressed and saddened her, but she had recovered from its shock. The marriage had been arranged by their respective families, and the hearts of neither had been consulted. Zaranegra, however, had become much in love with her, and had left her all which it was in his power to leave, and that had been much.

She was like a picture of Caterina Cornaro as she stood on the balcony of her house; her golden hair was enclosed in a pearl-sown net, she had some crimson carnations at her throat, and her cloak of red satin lined with sables lay on her shoulders and fell to her feet like the robes of a Dogaressa.

The balcony was filled with spiræa, whose white blossoms were like snow about her in the starlight and lamplight as the gondola which brought the Sicilian prince and his companion to her palace paused below at the water-stairs.

“How clever it was of you to see my opals under the grass and the sand!” she said, a few moments later, as Adrianis presented Damer in the long, dim room hung with tapestries and rich in bronzes, marbles, pictures, and mosaics.

She threw her cloak on a couch as she spoke; she was dressed in black, but the gauze sleeves of the gown showed her fair arms, and the bodice was slightly open on her bosom; her face was bright like a rose above the deep shadow of the gown; her hair had been a little ruffled by the wind of the evening as she had stood on the balcony.

“Madame,” said Damer, as he bowed to her with a strange and unwelcome sense of embarrassment, “Prince Adrianis should not have told you that I had such good fortune. I am no fit squire of dames: he is.”

“But how came you to see them, all dull and muddy as they were?”

“Sight is a matter of training; I use my eyes. Most people do not use theirs.”

She looked at him curiously and laughed. The answer seemed to her very droll.

“Everybody sees except the blind,” she said, somewhat puzzled.

“And the purblind,” added Damer.

She did not catch his meaning. She turned from him a little impatiently and addressed Adrianis.

She spoke of music. Adrianis was accomplished in that art; there was a mandoline lying on the grand piano; he took it up and sang to it a Sicilian love-song; she took it from him and sang Venetian barcarolle and stornelli; then they sang together, and their clear, youthful voices blent melodiously. People passing on the canal stopped their gondolas under the balcony to listen; some Venetian professional musicians in a boat below applauded. Damer sat in the shadow, and listened, and looked at them. Music said little or nothing to him; he had scarcely any comprehension of it; but something in the sound of those blended voices touched a chord in his nature; made him feel vaguely sad, restlessly desirous, foolishly irritated. The light fell on the handsome head of the youth, on the carnations at the lady’s throat, on the rings on their hands, which touched as they took the mandoline one from the other; behind them were the open casement, the balcony with its white flowers, the lighted frontage of a palace on the opposite side of the canal.

As they ceased to sing the people below on the water applauded again, and cried, “Brava! brava! Bis, bis!”

Adrianis laughed and rose, and, going out on to the balcony, threw some money to the boat-load of ambulant musicians who had left off their playing and singing to listen.

“Those artists below are very kind to us amateurs,” said Adrianis, with a little branch of spiræa in his hand, which he proceeded to fasten in his button-hole as he came back into the light of the room.

“You are more than an amateur.”

“Oh, all Sicilians sing. The syrens teach us.”

“Prince Adrianis is a poet,” said Damer, with a harsh tone in his voice.

“Who never wrote a verse,” said Adrianis, as he handed a cup of coffee to his hostess.

“Shut the windows,” said the Countess Zaranegra to her servants, who brought in coffee and wine, lemonade and syrups.

Through the closed windows the sound of a chorus sung by the strolling singers below came faintly and muffled into the room; the lamplight shone on the white spray of the spiræa in his coat, which looked like a crystal of snow.

“If I had found the opals I should have been inspired by them,” he added. “As it is, I am dumb and unhappy.”

Veronica Zaranegra smiled.

“If you are dumb, so was Orpheus.”

“And if you are unhappy so was Prince Fortunatus,” added Damer. “You are only sad out of wantonness because the gods have given you too many gifts.”

“Or because he has stolen a piece of spiræa.”

“I may keep my theft?” asked Adrianis.

“Yes. For you brought back the opals, though you did not find them.”

Soon after they both took their leave of her and went down to the waiting gondola. The boat-load of musicians had drifted upwards towards Rialto, the colours of their paper lanthorns glowing through the dark. There was no moon. They did not speak to each other in the few minutes which carried them to their hotel. When they reached it they parted with a brief good-night. Neither asked the other what his impressions of the lady, and of the evening, had been.

The night was dark. Mists obscured the stars. The lights at the Dogana and of the lamps along the Schiavone were shining brightly, and many other lights gleamed here and there, where they shone in gondolas, or boats, or at the mast-heads of vessels anchored in the dock of St. Mark. The hour was still early; eleven o’clock and the canal was not yet deserted. There was the liquid sound of parting water as people went to and fro on its surface. At such an hour Venice is still what it was in the days of Paul Veronese, or of Virginia di Leyva.

Adrianis sat by the sea-wall of the hotel garden and looked absently down the dark expanse studded with lights like diamonds, and thought exclusively of the woman he had quitted. He saw her golden hair shining in the lamplight, the red of the knot of carnations at her throat, the slender, jewelled hand on the mandoline, the smiling, rose-like mouth; he heard the clear, fresh, unstrained voice rising and falling with his own, whilst her eyes smiled and her eyes met his.

“Stones of sorrow! stones of sorrow!” he thought. “No, no. They shall be jewels of joy to me, to her. Love is born of a glance, of a note, of a murmur. It is the wonder flower of life. It blossoms full-grown in an instant. It needs neither time nor reflection.”

His heart beat gladly in him: his nerves were thrilled and throbbing; his welcome of a new and profound emotion was without fear.

In such a mood the merest trifle has eloquence. He was sorry when he looked down on the spray of spiræa in his coat, and saw that all the little starry flowers of it had fallen off, and vanished, as though it had indeed been snow which had melted at a breath of scirocco.